Beijing raises pollution alert to orange for first time as heavy smog blankets capital

Beijing raised its four-tiered smog alert system to 'orange' for the first time on Friday as heavy smog was forecast to roll into the city for the next three days. Officials have urged people to stay indoors and use public transport.

When Beijing’s Air Quality Index (AQI) readings went above 300
micrograms per cubic meter on Friday – more than ten times the
level considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO) –
the orange warning level was brought into effect.

The category, which is the second-highest after 'red,'
advises schools to cancel outside sports classes and states that
children and elderly should stay indoors. Residents are also
advised to leave their cars at home. The 'orange' alert falls
short of ordering schools to close and prohibiting government
vehicles from using the roads – those provisions come into force
under the red alert.

The government also ordered more than 100 factories in Beijing to
halt or limit their activities as soon as the orange alert came
into force on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported. Thirty-six
companies were ordered to stop production, while another 75 were
told to reduce it.

AQI measures six airborne pollutants – including PM2.5 particles
which have a diameter smaller than 2.5 microns. PM2.5 particles
have been a major contributor to the smog that has periodically
shrouded much of north and eastern China in recent years.

The tiered system has four levels – using blue, yellow, orange,
and red to indicate the air pollution in order of increasing
severity – and was introduced last October. An orange alert
indicates heavy to serious pollution for three consecutive days,
while a red alert indicates the most serious air pollution, also
known as level 6, for three days in a row.

The US Environmental Protection Agency considers AQI levels above
300 to be hazardous. Data from the US embassy in Beijing put the
levels of PM 2.5 particles at 378 on Friday.

While some residents have welcomed the announcement, others are
angry that more is not being done.

“Do the PM2.5 measurements have to explode off the charts
before we see a red alert?” said one user of weibo, a
Chinese website similar to Twitter.

Public discontent with the official reaction could be clearly
seen on Friday, when a Chinese military expert became the object
of scorn and ridicule after saying that the smog might be useful
in fending off a laser attack by the US military.

Smog has been sitting over Beijing since the middle of last week,
though authorities only issued a blue alert last Saturday. China
Central Television (CCTV) questioned late last Saturday why the
government failed to initiate an appropriate response under such
smoggy conditions.

“Their [authorities'] inaction in the face of the heaviest
air pollution in a month flies in the face of their own promises
and their own credibility,” China Daily said in an
editorial.

Wang Yuesi, a researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua that orange and
red alerts require action by the public and authorities are
reluctant to issue them.

“Environmental authorities lacked preparation in responding
to smog for both technical reasons and management reasons. All
they hope is that continuous smoggy days like this never
come,” said Wang.

He also cautioned that the issue was not only a problem for
Beijing, but also for a much larger region of northern and
eastern China - including the surrounding provinces of Hebei,
Shandong and Henan.

Many of the guidelines are not as new as the four-tiered system
and were introduced after a period of appalling air quality last
January when AQI at one point was more than 900; 40 to 45 times
above the recommended safety levels.

The Chinese government is keen to be seen as being tough on
pollution, after tremendous amounts of growth over the past few
decades left much of China’s water, air, and soil extremely
polluted.

Authorities have in recent years put into action numerous
policies to try to clean up the environment, including investing
in new non-polluting projects and giving courts the power to
enforce stiff penalties – including the death penalty – in the
most serious cases.

Since 2008, Beijing has had some success in reducing air
pollution. Particulate matter 10 readings have steadily fallen
but PM2.5 – which is far more dangerous and originates from car
exhaust fumes – has shot up as car ownership increases in the
capital.

But enforcement is patchy; particularly at the local level, where
authorities rely on taxes from polluting industries.